I was trying to add dual port 10gb network adapter (HP NC522SFP which is rebranded vserion of Qlogic QLE3142 ). Infact, this 10gb intelligent adapter series is of NetXen (aquired by Qlogic).
After installing network adapter, it was not recognized.
$ lshw -C network indicated networks UNCLAIMED.
$ ifconfig didn’t show them either.
I was sure either driver or firmware was missing. I checked from HP product page, but it included driver and firmware for Windows, Redhat and SUSE OS.
Then I went to Qlogic driver downloads. Interestingly, QLE3142 was missing from their series of intelligent network adapters.
Then I tried to check if my OS(Ubuntu) doesn’t has driver or firmware or both. I knew this particular hardware was of netxen. So,
Driver Test
$ cd /lib/modules/5.0.0-29-generic/kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/qlogic/netxen
indicated that i had driver netxen_nic.ko installed. So, i needed to upgrade firmware.
Note : my kernal version = 5.0.0-29-generic
I started searching for firmware. HP product page had firmware in rpm (redhat package manager). I tried to convert rpm to debian using alien. couldn’t compile it.
Firmware Solution
I found that broadcom also had NetXtreme || 57xxx Dual-Port 10GbE SFP+ series. And Infact, Broadcom 57810S is quite similar to HP NC522SFP(Qlogic QLE3142).
And I found that NetXtreme || 57xxx used bnx2x firmware. Then i tried to find debian package for bnx2x or other non-free firmware.
Luckily, i found this package firmware-bnx2x. Scroll down, click on all select the [relevent] file and click on it. It will start downloading.
Solution
Download the firmware
$ wget http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-bnx2x_20161130-5_all.deb
install the package
$ sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite firmware-bnx2x_20161130-5_all.deb
Note: This should pass the --force-overwrite flag to the underlying dpkg instance which will tell dpkg to overwrite one package’s file with anothers.